Is Polish shale gas the answer to the EU’s energy shortage?
The war in Ukraine has brought coal and nuclear power back into the European energy security debate, so why not shale too, Polish energy experts wonder.
“It’s still there,” said Piotr Przybylo, an energy expert at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in Warsaw. “Poland is still potentially open to extracting it and a revival of shale gas plans makes perfect sense,” he told DW.
Exploration and production of Europe’s shale gas reserves have been shelved for the past eight years. But with the US now among the world’s biggest gas exporters thanks to the shale gas revolution, it is being debated whether European countries should change their shale gas policies and plans.
According to a 2013 study by Germany’s Federal Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), technically recoverable shale gas reserves in Europe are estimated at around 14 trillion cubic meters (tcm). Poland and France have the largest estimated shale gas resources in the region.
The study based on data from the US Energy Information Administration said shale gas reserves in the Polish basement amount to 4.2 trillion cubic meters and 3.9 trillion cubic meters in France. Romania had 1.4 trillion cubic meters, Denmark 900 billion cubic meters and Germany had an estimated reserve of 500 billion cubic meters.
“About 70% of the LNG imported into Poland from the US is shale,” Przybyło said. “And that threatens the EU’s CO2 targets. The EU has hit a dead end in the green transition. It’s basically panicked.”
“Even with a fraction of the mentioned 4.2 tcm produced, it would still elevate the country to the top league of gas producers in the region and allow to improve European energy security”, said Przybylo.
The increase in the price of natural gas and the fact that the cost of extracting natural gas is more affordable than supplying it from other countries has once again brought the option of shale gas to the fore.
“An analysis of the potential of shale gas in Poland was carried out a few years ago and, as I understand it, the technical resources are significant, but the economically recoverable resources were significantly limited, given gas prices at the time”, Robert Zajdler , a lawyer in Warsaw, says.
“Gas prices are now significantly higher, which could create a sensible business model for shale gas production in Poland,” Zajdler told DW.
Source: DW
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